If you have ever wondered why the former Strictly Come Dancing professional AJ Pritchard isn’t acting any more, it’s because he has figured out that he is terrible at it.
In a recent interview, the dancer revealed “Acting isn’t my forte,” something that was instantly evident to everyone who saw him in his short-lived role as Marco on Hollyoaks a couple of years ago. He was responsible for the viral ‘How’s Trish?’ clip, co-starring his equally acting-challenged brother Curtis, in which both performers gave the impression that someone had written their lines on a wet napkin in a language neither of them understood.
But at least he gave it a go. Pritchard should be proud that, in his brief time on Hollyoaks, he managed to join the ranks of other celebrity non-actors who gave scripted television performance a bash. He now exists alongside these legends …
Justin Bieber, CSI
If you’ve seen Dave, you will know that Justin Bieber is fairly adept at playing himself. But 12 years ago, when he played a troubled teen in an episode of CSI, he demonstrated the limits of his range. In the big scene of his episode, he fires a gun at some law enforcement officers and they repay him by shooting him dead. It says a lot about his acting that he stars in a scene about policemen murdering a child and you end up on the policemen’s side.
Donald Trump, The Fresh Prince of Bel -Air
Although nowhere near as terrible as his Home Alone 2 cameo, his McDonald’s advert or any time he has ever appeared in public over the last decade and a half, Donald Trump’s cameo on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air deserves a mention. Not only is his performance abysmal – “Everybody’s always blaming me for everything,” he intones, like Lurch from the Addams Family at one point – but the characters all react in mortifying ways. Hilary flirts with him, Aunt Viv tries to follow him home. Carlton – God bless him – faints at the excitement of it all. Yuck.
Boris Johnson, EastEnders
Peggy Mitchell did some awful things in her time, but none quite as bad as when she sycophantically welcomed Boris Johnson, then mayor of London, into the Queen Vic for a pint. This was in Johnson’s light entertainer era when he did his best to convince people that he was a harmless funster and not the most dangerous prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom. Also, he can’t act.
Morrissey, South
Hardly anyone remembers the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside, let alone its ill-fated spin-off, South. But if it is to be remembered for anything, please let it be Morrissey’s brief, awkward and entirely superfluous cameo in one episode. Morrissey barely says anything and what he does say he seems to have learned phonetically. Thank goodness he settled on having non-stop tantrums as a back-up career because he was clearly not cut out for acting.
Prince, New Girl
Prince will be remembered as one of the greatest performers in history, and rightly so. As a world-class writer, singer, producer, dancer and guitarist, it seemed there was nothing he couldn’t do. Then New Girl wrote an episode for him to star in, called Prince, and it was apparent that he wasn’t particularly good at comedy. The rest of the New Girl cast were experts at nailing the show’s loosey-goosey tone, but Prince, who appeared to be reading his lines from cue cards, was not. It is a stilted performance, the worst episode of New Girl by a considerable margin and a rare blemish on Prince’s scorecard.
Ed Sheeran, Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones always had a weird sideline in cameos of famous musicians, with Sigur Rós and one of Coldplay popping up along the way. The most clanging appearance came from Ed Sheeran, who basically played Ed Sheeran. Again, he didn’t do a lot, except cack-handedly flirting with Arya Stark, but he was so aggressively Ed Sheerany that it shattered the show’s illusion. All that and he remained frustratingly uneaten by a dragon throughout.
Richard Branson, various
For a while, whenever a television programme featured a Virgin product, it also had to consent to a terrible Richard Branson cameo. He was everywhere, mumbling his lines next to a cruise ship on Baywatch and grinning inanely at Del Boy on Only Fools and Horses. But his appearance on an episode of Friends stands out most because he doesn’t play himself. Instead, he plays the world’s most irritatingly two-dimensional market stall trader and, good lord, he is woeful.
Geri Halliwell, Sex and the City
And finally, there is Geri Halliwell’s 30-second Sex and the City cameo – a cursed thing, haunting everyone who has seen it. The sheer number of ways Geri – playing a bikini-clad socialite known only as Phoebe – mangles her scant lines in such a small amount of time is breathtaking. She garbles the phrase “Soho House” like she is possessed by an evil spirit. She mispronounces the word “except”. She breathes in the wrong places. She gesticulates as if she’s trying to persuade someone to rescue her baby from a burning building. Take note of all the weird cutaways in the scene that suggest the producers had to edit around her performance to make it watchable. Halliwell is responsible for the worst cameo in the history of television, and therefore the best.
• This article was amended on 11 August 2023. Morrissey’s cameo acting role was in the Brookside spin-off South; not “Brookside South” as an earlier version said.
